Month: December 2017

This was the second year my older boys have participated in a local production of The Nutcracker. Seahawk had a solo as the Toy Soldier during the party scene, and both boys were part of the Russian dance pack during the Kingdom of Sweets in the second act. Here are some pictures of the highlights, including videos of the Seahawk’s dance. (For some reason, the computer isn’t finding the pictures from the second act to allow me to upload them. They still show up on my phone, but aren’t in the folder on when I open it on the computer, so I only have the earlier pictures.)

Dragonfly was enthralled!

To all my readers,

I hope your Christmas is merry and bright, full of family, friends, and faith.

Blessings,

Will and I talked about doing a gingerbread house with the boys this year, but then thought back to how hard those are to build if you make them from scratch, and how bad they taste if you buy the premade ones that you just decorate. So we decided to do gingerbread cookies instead. I cheated a bit and bought the pouch of cookie mix (just add butter and eggs), and Will picked up a pouch of royal icing and some red and green candies (like M&Ms, except Hershey brand). We also used some gummy bears that we had on hand already, and everyone had a really fun time decorating the cookies.

Small Fry got help with the frosting, but added the candies all by himself.

I decorated Dragonfly’s for him, and it was about all he could handle to not eat it before I took a picture!

Blessings,

We have been blessed to work with The Pencil Grip, Inc. on many occasions, and we love all of their products. Today, I’m here to tell you about something new in their arsenal: Magic Stix markers. My kids (particularly the two younger ones) have had the pleasure of drawing all sorts of different things over the past week or so using these markers, and they love them! They’ve definitely become the medium of choice for the kids in their neverending quest to create more artwork.

Magic Stix aren’t so different from other markers. They come in a variety of colors (packs of 12 or 24). They’re odorless. They’re washable.

But where they really shine is in their endurance. See, they’re guaranteed not to dry out for up to 7 days – with the cap off. That’s remarkable, and something I had a hard time bringing myself to test prior to writing up this post. Finally, I knew that my deadline was approaching and I had to test out that claim. Due to my hesitation, I didn’t let the markers sit for 7 days without their caps, but I did let one of the sit out with no cap for 3 days (well, more like 36 hours over the course of 3 calendar days). And guess what? It worked just as well at the end of that time as it did at the beginning. Check it out:

I won’t exactly say I was shocked, because I know that The Pencil Grip wouldn’t make the claim if it wasn’t true, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that there wasn’t even any difference in the quality of the line. A normal marker would have to have been tossed in the garbage by the time I wrote the first “Day 2” on my test paper. I’m definitely impressed by these!

My only issue with them is that they bleed quite a bit. When your children use them, make sure to have plenty of extra paper underneath the one they’re writing on to save your tables.

You can buy Magic Stix for $9.95 (for the 12 pack) or $19.95 (for the 24 pack) on Amazon – and the 12-pack is on Prime, so if you hurry, you can get them in time for Christmas!

Blessings,

For Seahawk’s birthday, we wanted to get him a “gift that would inspire” rather than just something else to clutter up the kids’ room (since they’re all 4 in one bedroom at the moment). So we found a puppet from a toy store, and we got some books on puppeteering from the library. He had loads of fun with that, and has continued to have fun for the 5 weeks since his birthday. So much fun, in fact, that the other kids wanted in on the fun. Exactly what we’d hoped to accomplish!

After that, Will went online and found a “make your own puppet” pattern, so he downloaded and printed it it, and the boys have been making these puppets for themselves quite a lot since then. It’s really neat to see their creativity flow and how many different puppets they can make from the same pattern. Even Dragonfly is getting in on the action – not of making puppets (since he’s only 2), but of playing with them. He just loves all of the puppets! Will even watched an episode of Sesame Street with him once since then, and he immediately recognized the characters as puppets. That’s something Will readily admits he didn’t understand until he was much older.

So today, I wanted to share a picture of Seahawk with one of the puppets he’s created. The nose is entirely his creation – the pattern didn’t include that.

Blessings,

As you may know, Dragonfly isn’t much of a baby anymore. He turned 2 last month, and now when asked the question, “Are you a baby?” the answer is (almost) always, “No baby. Little boy.” Super cute.

Occasionally the answer changes a bit though. You see, the big kids have been watching the TV show Flash lately, and the little kids are sometimes caught up in the episodes with them. So sometimes, instead of saying, “No baby. Little boy,” Dragonfly will tell me, “No baby. Flash.” And then he runs away. 🙂

To aid in his love of all things Flash, Munchkin made him this little costume that he can wear over the top of his clothes, and then he really is the Flash. He absolutely loves it.

Blessings,

Yes, I know, Halloween was a long time ago. But I never got around to sharing this cute picture of Will and Dragonfly wearing their masks 🙂

Blessings,

Lori offered me a list of books for book club this month, and I picked Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It’s the true story of Louis Zamperelli, an Olympic runner in the 1930s who then was drafted to fight in WWII.

Image credit

I’d heard a bit about Zamperelli, but didn’t actually know anything about besides there was a YWAM book about his life. So I was interested in this book. The other thing it had going for it was that the audio book was available from Overdrive, so I didn’t have to wait to get my (virtual) hands on it. Also, the audio book was read by the late Edward Hermann, famous for his role as Richard Gilmore on Gilmore Girls (among other things). All of these things were wins in my book (pardon the pun), and I was not disappointed.

In the first several chapters, I was far from impressed of Mr. Zamperelli. In fact, as I listened (while knitting) I remember thinking on more than one occasion that he was a complete and total punk, someone who just made the “mom” in me really mad. His own mother must have been a saint to have put up with all of his shenanigans. But then his brother got him into running, and his entire life changed. He finally had something to put his focus into, and within just a few years of diving into that hobby, he was Olympics bound in the long-distance running events, handily beating out more experienced runners in his categories. In fact, his own category (the one mile) was full, so he trained hard to run the 5000-meter race – nearly 3 miles. I found all of these chapters to be fascinating.

Then WWII started. The 1940 Olympics were canceled (did you know that? I didn’t), and Zamperelli joined up as an air force bombadier. He’d been a pilot in the military previously, but left the service because he hated flying. What he didn’t know was that his contract upon leaving was that by re-enlisting to avoid being drafted, he was automatically enlisted as an air force soldier. Ironic, eh?

His time in the war was nothing short of amazing, and I don’t want to spoil the story here, as much as I’d love to talk more about it. Suffice it to say that his story is amazing enough that I’ve re-borrowed the audiobook and it’s going on the list of things the kids and I are going to do for homeschool this month. It was that good. Also, parts of the story reminded me a lot of the Jacob de Shazer book we read earlier this year (a YWAM book), and I think it will be good for them to make some comparisons between the two men.

Make sure to head over to Lori’s blog to read her thoughts as well.

Next time, we’ll be reading Waiting for Rachel, a lighthearted Christian romance novel. I read it earlier this month and really enjoyed it, and when I mentioned it to Lori she was amenable to reading it too. You can get he Kindle version for free on Amazon if you want to join us.

Blessings,